I don't know who needs to hear this, but: A few years ago, I moved my family to a rural valley in the Western US. Beautiful. I found out a few weeks later that there were plans for a company from Las Vegas to build an enormous coal-fired power plant here, with 400-foot tall smokestacks, and all the massive pollution that'd come with it. I get the need for electricity, but it was a poor choice of location. I asked the Vegas ppl, off the record, why here? They said the rest of the state already violated clean air laws. Experts predicted a loss of 6-12 years of life for every resident if it was built. So, I started a website, email newsletter, got local cable TV access for broadcasting public hearings, and set up a magazine to get the word out that not everyone was okay with that. Others agreed. One local lady set up a voting initiative that power plants would need voters' approval. And because the group had no money to speak of, a couple of non-lawyer friends put a court challenge together. The case went to the state supreme court. We won. It turned out that the only evidence of research for the permit to pollute our valley was a scribbled approval on a post-it note. Some locals complained the local government had lost out on tax revenues. But a few months later, a solar power station was proposed by another company. It's silent, clean, peaceful, looks nice, brings in tax revenues -- and everyone is living 6-12 years longer. Not all superheroes wear capes. Don't let people, including wealthy people, push you around. Save your worlds, my friends, and you can help save the whole world.

Welp, you're not alone in this line of thinking. I write textbooks and this is a lot of our focus these days. My publisher also agrees, for one. And this guy makes some solid points, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I'm finishing up a comprehensive K-12 curriculum textbook series. It's meant to be concise, geared toward home-based learners, as either a primary or secondary education source. I've written elaborate outlines on every subject. Then, going through each, we decided how to flesh out each subject in more detail. I talked with my editor today about revising the Math textbook. She decided that, since arithmetic is increasingly handled by tech devices, such as voice descriptions to a smartphone, and is very likely to become more helpful (and powerful) via AI, in coming months, we'd leave the entire Math subject area in outline form. Basically, as-is. "Addition works like this... Subtraction, in contrast, works like this..." Not to oversimplify, but basically, we cover all of lower-grade arithmetic by way of definitions -- no exercises, no repetition, in just a few paragraphs, and just a few examples, much as every other subject is taught (other than writing/communication, itself). Our thinking is that math will largely be set aside as a day-to-day time-filler, and covered in a few weeks, once children's brains are developed enough to fully grasp the concepts without any unnecessary struggle. That's the future. Sorry, math fans! So, as something of a professional, this looks like the late-1970s double-downing on slide rules, at the dawn of pocket calculators. Further, no matter how delighted computing-based companies may be with this move, it reminds me of Henry Ford, and other industrialists, who largely determined how the US public school system would be designed -- entirely around reducing their labor costs. Full stop. YMMV. At least for my textbooks, and my publishers, this UK proposal seems like the exact opposite direction to go. But, hey, you do you, UK! Enjoy yourselves, fans of math! If we ever need someone who can calculate with a slide rule, maybe you can help us with that, too.

Who knew that being irresponsible could have negative consequences?

I see some of you have never met https://www.virtualfamilykingd....

Most colleges have dispensed with Friday classes over the past 15-20 years. Many K-12 school districts shifted to an A/B schedule -- longer classes held Mondays/Wednesdays or on Tuesdays/Thursdays -- many years ago, with Fridays being only a half-day. This was largely due to colleges doing the same and the need for high schools, in particular, to match that schedule. If you've *never* had to go to school on a Friday, for your entire life, how likely is it you'd be willing to sacrifice 1/3 of your weekends for a job?

The last in the Daniel Craig as James Bond series, and possibly the best.

Giuseppe Turco, the Italian songwriter who wrote the song, died in 1907. So, by the "70 years after death" standard, it would have entered the public domain in 1977. Even if it was an original arrangement, John McCormack died in 1945. So that 70-year standard would have ended copyright protections in 2015.

When they have to pay for this exact same service out of their own pockets (in a year or two?), they'll regret this.

Aren't they trying to build a brand. Arrogance makes you stupid.

I assumed there'd be a chorus of "It's 42" down here, too. Please educate yourselves, Slashdot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

IDK about this competitor, but I do know that, after much consideration, and watching the company and its search products closely for over 20 years, I can state clearly: Google search no longer works. When was the last time you searched for something and it gave you something unexpected? A surprisingly helpful result? A new website? Or a website published within the last five years, even? Has it recommended literally any website to you, in the past 3-5 years, that wasn't in the top, say, 5% of most popular websites -- or a site that wasn't advertising on the search results pages? Google search is broken. Irretrievably. The world is suffering because of it. A real competitor will be most welcome.

That's it. Everything Mark Zuckerberg says is a false commitment -- committing to do nothing different than what he was already doing (or not doing). He learns nothing. He believes whatever he already thought. All of his promised changes boil down to repeating what he's already done, over and over and over and over. He needs to be replaced.

No installed user base. Source: Old usability guy.

Amazon is like America Online/AOL was to the WWW. Eventually, people figure things out on their own and no longer need, or want, the hand-holding the aggregators provide, in early days, for newbies. Source: Old guy, working in online tech since 1993.